


Dead Man Walking

by Envoy



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: All the Good Stuff Really, Depression, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Post-Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Trauma, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanted to have my own shot at a redemption fic for Juice. </p><p>Take, if you will, the premise that he somehow miraculously survives. It's 'survival' on paper only because at this point he's so fucked it'd probably be kinder to euthanize him. Samcro's new Pres can't help making an appearance on the down low.</p><p>** Old fic, Newly Updated! **</p><p>Because I still can't let go and it seems neither can Chibs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

> I watch the edge of his face in the dark. Its beauty is part of what binds me to him. I don’t know how to make this sound virtuous.
> 
> —            _Anne Carson, from “Part V: The Anthropology of Water,” Plainwater: Essays and Poetry_
> 
>  
> 
> What do you think of, lying so quietly
> 
> by the water? When you look that way I want
> 
> to touch you, but do not, seeing
> 
> as in another life we were of the same blood.
> 
> —           _Louise Glück, from The Pond_

 

 

At the forefront is the feeling of drowning. The hot viscous flood pours thick and fast. Ears, nose, eyes, mouth. Thick and glutinous and bountiful. Who knew there was so much blood in him.

In the pulsing thrumming present as the rush streams through his fingers he feels, ironically, very _alive_.

And also like he's having the weirdest, most vivid trip ever. In his dreams oceans of blood rise to plentifully bathe the earth, embryonic and sweet, flooding from his ankles up over his head until he's floating in their red liquor. Parting like the red sea for Moses, it washes him up in a huge emptiness like the first fish to crawl onto land. A birth of blood.

He's suspended in this timeless space where moments and proportions are stretched out like india rubber. The stakes are those of creation and destruction. It's very like touching God.

It all comes down to a hospital bed in California. In ICU a patient is hooked up to an intravenous and tubes providing his second blood transfusion. Juice Ortiz looks stiff and white as a Nazi corpse from the early stages of hypovolemic shock. Ron Tully would be proud. By some miracle the shiv missed his jugular vein and haemorrhaging from the hole in his throat had been controlled, but the nurses rushing about his unconsciousness body during those first few hours speak in hushed and urgent tones and before the night is out he comes precipitously close to organ failure.

 

 

He's discharged with a goody bag of meds and a follow up appointment.

The docs set him up with some trauma counsellor, which, you know. The booklet reads: _Both natural and human-generated disasters, which are associated with destruction as well as loss of loved ones and irreplaceable belongings, often overwhelm one's normal coping capacity._ At that point he pretty much zones out.

Other than that, he's just turfed out onto the street soon as they can unplug him from the machines. Once they were sure he'd wake up, recovery from the physical injuries was only a matter of time as far as the docs were concerned. So it is that Juice returns to a freedom outside the walls of any institution which he thought he'd never see again.

Some carefully honed caution tells him not to go home although his house has sat unoccupied longer than he's been inside. Telling himself it's not the same and he's no longer on the run, he settles in a small apartment far enough from the centre of Charming to avoid echoes of his own life. It's not prison. He can stand on his porch in the morning and just breathe in fresh air; bleached blue sky with its single plane trail; the sticky smell of a kebab stall carrying across the block. Desperate as he is every single day for even a hint of Samcro, he schools himself not to go looking. Ok, he hacks the accounts a coupla times, but that's it. He's learning to be in his own skin, in his own place, to walk to the cornershop once a week without freaking out. All things considered, he's not sure how good a learner he is.

It's a solitary existence. No Unser, no Wendy; all his tenuous links to the club are gone. So eventually it's Chibs that turns up.

With no more preamble than an abrupt knock on the door, he finds him stood on his doorstep. The shock hits him with all the force of a runaway train.

He sees the President patch and he _knows_. The certainty sinks right down into the pit of his stomach.

'I'm so sorry.'

It's barely a whisper but he means it, truly. He thinks he might cry. The unspoken 'brother' he longs to finish that sentence with is missing and without it the phrase sounds empty; a common platitude. He tries to tell him with his eyes. The door falls closed behind them and if he didn't already know, the grief all over Chibs would tell him everything. For a second their gazes lock and - fuck, _Chibs_ -it burns right through the antidepressant fog. The new President's eyes swim. And just as suddenly he looks away; doesn't want to share that with Juice.

'I heard something in- in there but... I wasn't really with it, y'know.'

'Went out on his own terms.'

And just like that the shutters fall: conversation closed. There's an awkward silence, stony on Chibs' part. Some part of Juice must want to make it work, to oil the machinery, as if they weren't irreparably broken, and is compelled to fill the silence.

'He was gonna make it quick for me.'

He's not entirely sure why he says this. It's a yawning and awful declaration. Chibs grits his teeth and is silent and unreadable.

'Aye.'

He does nothing to ameliorate the impression Juice gets that he isn't safe. Panic bubbles in him below the surface but he's so acclimatised to it now he's barely shaken. It really isn't a mask. He feels nothing much. The notion that Chibs might be here to complete Jax's work isn't entirely unwelcome.

'Er, how did  you find- ?'

'Cut the crap, Juice. I'm no here to make small talk or tell yeh how the fuckin job's goin, alrigh'?'

He's not here for him. But there's no one else and he knows it.

Juice nods, retreating further into his living room and sinking into the couch - accepting even death into his house. Death in his brother's clothes. That the guy's standing there at all against all his wishes is a characteristic sign of his fortitude that doesn't go unnoticed. He closes his eyes briefly to savour this tiny moment, awash with gratitude and the sound of his own name. Always sounded different on Chibs' tongue and it's like remembering something or someone; Christ, that's who he used to be. _Juice. Juicy._ It's been a long time, and hearing Chibs' voice is worth it. He doesn't give a shit about the clumsiness of it, not after that awful silent departure. Any words are better than that.

Chibs watches this vision of passivity like you'd look at rotting meat, as broiling with emotion as Juice is empty of it. He has to look away, shaking his head.

'Jesus.'

Juice opens his eyes and smiles. Looking comically out of place just stood there in all his leathers - a reminder of how far Juice's previous life is from this nondescript little place - Chibs glances about the meagrely furnished room before sitting lightly on a stool opposite the sofa. The low hum of the TV fizzes in the background. He scratches his neck.

'You got money?'

'Yeah, I - had some savings. And Clear Passages still got my share.'

Sitting in stagnant silence is deeply uncomfortable, even painful, and would be intolerable if both men weren't already used to such feelings. But when Chibs gets up without a word the bottom drops out of Juice.

'Don't leave yet, man. Not yet.'

In his quiet, mercurial way the President flares up like a lit match. With one sharp movement he spins on his heel to confront Juice, fists clenched at his sides and voice strained with emotion.

'What'd yeh expect me to do, exactly?' He waves an arm in an expansive gesture across the room as if to emphasise its smallness and emptiness, 'Watch cartoons with yeh all night?'

The look of him blows away all flimsy illusions. This isn't a man he wants to stick around stopping him from unravelling, although, fuck it he can't stay together without it. The hardened scorn he sees burns right through him beyond repair. Juice doesn't tear up, he just feels scorched and empty as a desert.

Resentment and exasperation flicker brightly in Chibs' eyes in the low light - jaded but never anaesthetised. There's so much life in that look as he turns to walk out that he leaves Juice gutted, like his insides have been scooped out with a spoon.  

 

 

That night Chibs rides home and sits in the dark. He thinks of his family back in Belfast, he thinks of Jax, although it is a raw and open wound. Finally he lights up a smoke, takes a deep drag and faces the shadow that followed him home. The great looming darkness that is the idea of Juice's death estranged from him in jail, what could have been, closes in on him. It is a certainty of which he is in no doubt that Juice could be six feet under right now and he would have done nothing to prevent it.


	2. Chapter 2

Every doctor would advise against drowning his trauma in spirits. He thinks, fuck it. He's alive. Might as well imbibe as much as he can physically tolerate now that he's not cold on a slab in the morgue.

To that end, he adds another empty bottle to the half a dozen lined up on his usually immaculate living room carpet. In the tepid sundown gloom behind drawn curtains the room starts to blur and, likewise, the glaciers of his emotional detachment begin to melt into the sea. Alcohol is one sure way to burn through the numbness.

First come the shakes, but he presses his hands to his sides and ignores those. The table lamp is one minute comfortingly soft focus, the next it's as if all the colour has been leeched out of the world. The room flips seasickly between homely and terrifying, at points the walls shrinking in on him and the cold cement smell of jail suddenly sharp in his nostrils. He lifts the bottle to his lips, knowing now that it can't do what a little talc-white powder could do for him. And there it is: the cold vacuum of memory leaps up to swallow him and one fleeting thought is enough to drop him back in that cell. He longs for medicated oblivion and he hates himself for it because along with that comes Tully.

When that happens he clutches his cut close to him, smelling its residual scents. You're out. You're not gonna die in there. The fear subsides, but in its place is a gaping loss and all the sins stitched permanently into the cut he holds in his hands. The club is lost to him. Chibs is lost. He weeps freely until he finally passes out on the couch in the early hours with his cut pulled over him, the closest he can get to it without actually wearing it - a right he's forfeited. When he wakes the next afternoon it's only to piss and return the bottle to his lips to resume the whole sorry cycle.

    

 

The circle of plastic chairs like kindergarten furniture on the vinyl floor is appropriate. It's hollow and cheap and very normal. Like the people. He feels at ease. During the breaks the melancholy hum of chatter and people milling about drinking coffee from plastic cups is oddly soothing, allowing him to drift without completely dissociating. The coordinator has been looking at him in silence for a while now, at some point having moved into the chair beside him. Juice smiles back with drugged calm.

'There anyone really important to you?' The tone is soft and confidential. A brief flash of amusement never makes it to his face; he's not even offended at the clear implication of instability. 'Make you feel like carrying on?'

He shrugs. Only one name comes immediately to mind. This was the place for a wife or child but he only has one family.

'Chibs, man... Oh, shit.'

His voice cracks mid speech. He puts his head in his hands, floored by the realisation that he's still so invested in a relationship that was fucked a long time ago. It's a big kind of love he has, forged deep. It's generous, amorphous, pliable. And it made him feel like a good person, a pure person. It shits on him all over again to know that they've written a line under all that. It's too fucking fresh.

Not for a second does he regret feeling like this because it's his cut, his home, it's what makes him. Chibs is part of the warp and weave of that. He can't regret when in spite of everything, he still loves him.

He smiles ruefully.

'That's fucked, right?'   

It's at just this moment that Trayvon reaches across his line of sight, depositing a half eaten slice of Madeira on a side table. He does this; floating around and across people with the jittery swagger of an ex-junkie. He wears it well, occasionally too forward but easily charming. He makes Juice smile.

'Some messed up kind of brotherhood if you ask me. Some white saviour bullshit. Aint never gonna understand what a black guy need some old white hippies for.'

Juice smiles now, looks down at his lap.

'I'm Latino.'

'Nah, that's it right there.'

He doesn't need to elaborate. Juice is hyperaware that not too long ago he wouldn't have dared mention his old man to his closest friends let alone a room full of strangers.

Still, he purses his lips and shakes his head because that's not it.

'Nah. Chibs isn't like that. He's a good guy. Really.'

Trayvon shrugs lightly, wiping stray crumbs from his chest.

'A'ight then. Hope your Scotsman has the answers when you done with this shithole.'

Juice can only shake his head; that's not really a possibility any more.

 

 

He sees Tray again on his way out of the clinic, where he's smoking by the other side of the double doors. Even here, where everyone is obviously some kind of mentally deficient, he manages to look like a detached observer of human life. His slouch is one of cocky entitlement, telling you he has more right to be standing there than you and knows it. He nods to Juice in acknowledgement and reaches across to offer him the packet. Juice takes one with a smile, thinking it's nice to be brought into someone's confidence - a sucker for gang mentality as always - and they stand flanking the building's entrance in companionable quiet.

'Seriously, though, when's the last time you even seen any your _Latino_ family?'

Juice blows smoke towards the ground.

'Gave all that up.'

'So let me get this right, they got you physically cutting ties with your own race?'

That does make him laugh, a brief humourless chuckle.

'All families are dysfunctional, right?'

'Aint that the truth.'

 

 

Tray's pseudo-philosophies may strike a note of truth but Juice doesn't need a shrink to tell him he's in no position to engage critically with the ethics of his position - or, what _was_ his position - or challenge his already fragile sense of self. He needs love and affirmation. The cold truth he sits with every day is that his own actions have already denied him that.

 

 

The apartment smells like shit. There's some kind of days old stain on the floor, booze or puke or fuck knows what. Behind the sofa the neatly arranged bottles on the shelf have gathered a thick layer of dust, while empty beers litter the carpet. Beside them is Juice.

He goes to pieces. He's on the floor with him in fractional seconds, kneeling by Juice's body. Time is too fast for his trembling hands, fumbling for his glasses, reaching for Juice's wrists. _Good Lord, please._

'Shite. Shite. Juice. C'mon boy. Stay with me.'

What a fucking stupid thing to say, he thinks; what is this, a TV show? In the end a sharp slap to the face brings Juice back, bleary eyed, and Chibs kneels with his knuckles pressed against his thighs as a great wave of relief washes over him. Chibs kneeling above him is the first thing Juice sees and that, or something, has him in tears before either of them have said a word.

'You remember that weekend in Indian Hills? We rode out in the middle of July and just stayed up half the night by that lake on a tarp 'cause it was so warm. Fireflies hovering over the water.' He sobs, 'Oh God.'

'Aye, I do.'

Chibs' fingers softly wipe the tears soaking Juice's lips. Both of his hands are touching his face.

He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. Juice is looking at him but as if from behind a screen. His voice suddenly goes flat and faint.

'What are you doing here Chibs? You were never coming back.'

Chibs' lips draw back off his teeth. His fingers curl instantly back into his palms and hands withdraw from Juice's face. This is his cold eyed, bloodiest face, and it should scare the shit out of anyone. He stands, picks up an ashtray from the side table and hurls it at Juice's head. Juice lies there, barely flinching. A line of blood trickles from his temple down to the floor.

'Yeh've got that right. Soon as I walked through this damn door I knew I never wanted to see your dirty rat face again long as I live.'

His mouth, its heavy Glaswegian syllables, lingers around the sharpest consonants with venom. They echo around Juice's head long after he strides out of the room. _rat... long as I live..._ He drifts hazily on the edge of consciousness for who knows how long, until a blurry figure emerges in the kitchen doorway and a cold bottle is being pressed into his hand.

'Drink this. You need to rehydrate. How long've yeh been on the fuckin floor?'

He lifts Juice from the ground, props his limp form against the sofa and awkwardly slumps beside him on the carpet. Juice fingers the condensation on the bottle's sides - his mouth is kinda dry.

'What were you doin, Juice?'

The guy only sounds tired. Juice lets the ice cold beer slide down his throat.

'I didn't try to... I just wanted everything to go away. Just for a while.'

It's like he's been holding onto something which he's finding difficult to give voice.

'I didn't know... what Jax was planning. I didn't know. And I didn't care. But... I've missed you,' he says thickly. 'If you turn up a fuckin' corpse now I will personally follow you to hell to murder you a second and bloodier time, you hear?'


	3. Chapter 3

The last time he used this number it'd been to hear that voice one last time, on his way out of a town that sucked its inhabitants back in like a freaky groundhog day that he was still living.

_'It's me. Is this ok?'_

There's a long heavy pause.

_'It's ok.'_

_'Hey. I, um, I got another... meeting, this week. With my group. Got me doing therapy and shit, try to... sort stuff out with my head.'_

Another pause.

_'That's good.'_

_'Thing is... I know I need to, but I'm not sure I can do it.'_

_'... You need me to drop you off or somethin?'_

On the other end Juice lets out a long breath and his shoulders drop.

_'Look, I know you're busy, man. I wasn't fishing. Actually, I don't really know why I called.'_

He listens to the static down the line.

_'What time is it? Your psycho circle?'_

_'Two on Wednesday. Hey... Thank you.'_

 

 

He turns up early on Wednesday, Juice still in just his sweatpants and bedraggled by sleep because he's still not so good at waking up to his life. He stutters and mumbles stupidly, covering for how much he's quietly moved by Chibs' presence. By the forethought of the truck parked outside and how he just dumps himself on the couch waiting for Juice to go shower.

They park up outside the clinic in full view of its wide windows, Chibs with both hands firm on the wheel sceptically eyeing the building's display of pot-plants and flyers for AA meetings. Juice fidgets in the passenger seat of the truck, worrying at a loose thread on the sleeve of his sweater. He likes people. He never had any problem, besides the obvious, with the people in jail and here is the same. Chibs is not so generous, but he's here. And if he's made uncomfortable by the presence of all these crazies he doesn't show it.

'Guessin yer not gonna tell your head doctors about your little weekend excess?'

'No. Are you?'

He's brought Chibs here, and he has every right to tell them.

'No, I'm not.'

He looks across at him, conveying his gratefulness for this on top of everything.

'Look, you should head back. Sure you've got plenty of shit to do.'

'I'm sitting right here. My idea of a perfect afternoon - putting my feet up in a loony bin's parking lot.'

Juice stops with his hand on the door.

'You're spending too much time with Tig, dude.'

They've barely mentioned anyone else and saying Tig's name aloud prompts a surge of warmth and melancholy which he has to push aside. It's a weird feeling to have about that nutcase.

'Shite, you might be right there.'

 

 

They didn't go unnoticed apparently. Tray appears behind him at coffee break like a ghost wearing Adidas.

'So someone came with a buddy today. Everyone's been eyeing up your leather clad chauffer out front. Got big names doing taxi runs these days apparently.'

He brushed this sarcasm off.

'Funny thing, I was actually in Samcro once, you know. They only make me talk about it here nearly every week. It's just someone I used to know giving me a lift, that's all.'

Tray is slipping a hip flask out of the back of his pants and waving it conspiratorially under Juice's nose.

'Aren't you supposed to be a recovering alcoholic?'

'Ehh, a brother's gotta live a little, y'know? So you two all tight again and shit?'

'Not exactly.'

He can see the cogs whirring in the dude's head.

'Thought you were his boy, yeah? What I heard, your Pres goldilocks was running riot, needed people devoted enough to have his back at the expense of all others. See what I'm getting at?'

' _Hey_ , man. Jax is _dead_. And you make him sound like a monster. He was... guy had a heart. And he was clever, y'know. That's what I didn't understand.'

That last Juice muttered to himself more than anything, anxiety provoked by Tray's words bringing back his paranoid tendency to talk to himself. All his voices filling endless empty hours with asking why; _why_ when his heart was in the club and everything he did was for Samcro couldn't they see that?

'Clever, I can believe. But your Scot?'

Juice's hands are trembling. He loses patience, pushing his plastic chair aside with a screech of linoleum.

'What is this, an intervention? Last I heard, you're a scumbag lost cause same as me.'

He stands alone at the coffee table trying to get a hold of himself. Idly stacking and re-stacking coffee cups, all he can see is Chibs' darting eyes and sharp teeth like daggers. It was pretty clear. After what his and Gemma's lie had set in motion, Jax had gone off the rails, monstrous with grief, and when his rational tendencies had called the whole bloodbath into question his second in command had only egged him on. A traitorous little voice whispers _he's not a leader, he's a thug, he couldn't see you because Jax's mission was all that mattered._ He had been up to his elbows in blood and he'd relished every minute.

But Juice loved him.

 

 

When the shrink inevitably raises his own doubts about Juice's present company, he's resolved.

'He beat you when you pissed him off.'

'Yeah, I don't care.'

He's thankful for the clarity. His belief in Chibs is apparently entirely undented.

'You don't get it. I'm not a battered wife. He's not my husband, he's my brother. Shit's different. We work things through different. It may not be good or healthy or whatever, but...'

He can hear how that sounds, but finds he doesn't give a single crap. For the first time in too long he knows he isn't a victim.

'But we get past it. We've got past it.'

He imagines him pacing in the car park with a tug of fondness; slightly embarrassed and irritable, but clamping down on his discomfort once again as he has been lately, for Juice's sake. Retracting his claws, acting the stereotype out of politeness for this domesticated bullshit when he's no such thing.

'Look, how many killers you hang out with on a daily basis? That's everyone I know dude.'

Come on man, he feels like saying, this guy ran with the old school IRA, grew up somewhere shit ran down the stairs, with no kitchen or bath or toilet. Hard as nails was no cliché here. But it'd be pointless with these people.

'You should be wary. People who use violence once will do so again.'

He thinks about the way Chibs tilts his head down into his chest and then turns it to give you that long look. When he smiles and dimples crease the slash across his cheeks.

'Yeah, you fucking should. You should run a fucking mile if Chibs Telford's got your name.'

He can feel the grin stretching his cheeks. He feels dangerous.

Walking out with no more than a polite nod, he stands on the front steps in the full heat of the mid afternoon sun. Samcro's President is reclining on the bonnet with his arms folded, standing as Juice walks towards him. Juice can feel everyone's eyes on them and it feels good. The uncertainty melts from Chibs' features soon as Juice pins him with a stare; affectionate, playful, challenging. Juice feels the rush of control hit him like a speedball. The reckless, gung-ho insolence that Chibs always falls for. A gunpowder smell fills his nostrils.

'Let's go stir some shit up. I gotta flex, man.'

Fuck, he loves that answering sparkle in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's been a bit delayed by unexpected life stuff over the last few days but it's here now.

 

They leave the place behind in a cloud of dust and a screech of tyres. Juice can make any engine go nought to sixty in under ten seconds. Just takes the right touch. Tearing out of the parking lot, he takes the wrong turning, missing the small streets Chibs took to get him here and just looking for the open road. Cruising along the main street, though, they pass a diner where a sheriff's car is parked at the roadside. The officials of this district have evaded scrapes with the MC until now being as this respectable little locality is far outside of usual Samcro territory. He knows Chibs clocked it too. They exchange one look.

'You want some waffles?'

'Aye, don't mind if I do.'

He circles the block and drives past the diner for the second time, only then hitting the brakes with a loud protest from the cars behind. Chibs smiles amicably at the angry drivers through the window. Juice reverses coolly past with his elbow leaning on the open window and the keys in his fist _accidentally_ scraping one long jagged line across the immaculate paint job. Chibs leans across to look at the wing mirror hanging off with a low whistle.

'Whoops. Now tha' _is_ a shame.'

They don't wait around to see the sheriff finish his lunch.

On a clean stretch of highway he presses his foot to the pedal. A patrol car is not far behind. The road screeches under their wheels, a shatter of dust and gravel singing against the hood of the approaching vehicle. He swerves around a black Sedan doing eighty and out of the path of an oncoming truck with one smooth manoeuvre. Chibs is itching in the passenger seat.

'C'mon! C'mon!' he yells, ' 'fore they see who you've got in the fuckin' passenger seat.'

It's been so long since he's gone full throttle even the grumblings of this knocked out engine sound sweet. The wind sings against the truck, rattling the fittings and hitting him full in the face like a bucket of cold water.

Only, when the cops have long disappeared in the rear view mirror and they're alone on an open stretch of highway fringed by green fields, Juice still has his foot down. He can barely hear Chibs hollering over the wind and static in his ears.

'Jesus, slow down! You tryin' to get me killed?'

It's cruel, but the speed fills him with cold fire and it's the only feeling that is a hundred percent _living_ , the same cold fire he had felt bleeding out from the throat. His voice comes out eerie, disembodied.

'How would it feel?'

Chibs' wild eyes are half on him, half on the road. Something has clicked and the situation has flipped from exciting to dangerous. He taps the fingers of one hand lazily on the wheel while taking a corner at a reckless speed that throws Chibs hard against the door. He speaks slowly without taking his eyes off the road.

'Thing is, bottom line is, you signed off on everything. You turned your back and you let them do it. _Why did you do that to me?_ ' He grinds his heel against the accelerator pedal, 'And now you're here. Picking me up for my fucking appointments. I'm trying to understand. Why you would do that.'

He sounds... almost _desperate_.

' _I don't know!_ _Because there's something... there! There's something there, okay?_ '

His voice is cracked, and his eyes are wide and entreating.

'Jesus Christ, Juice, stop this! I'm sorry.'

The moment slides away just like that. Juice takes his eyes off the road and the truck veers wildly across the highway.

Chibs lunges forwards just as Juice takes his foot off the pedal and they grind to a halt on the verge, breathing fast. Chibs' hand stays pressed over Juice's on the wheel.

'I know you were ready to die in there.'

They don't speak for a while. There isn't really any way to follow up that sort of statement.

'I don't know what I'm doing at the head of this club, Juice. I don't know how long we can keep floggin' a dead horse. Every day I have to start again pretendin' I do know what the fuck I'm doin'. Knowing someone else should be wearin' this patch. It's all wrong. What business have I got recruiting new members to a club like that?'

Juice knows instinctively he hasn't voiced these thoughts to anyone until now.

'For a minute there... I actually almost forgot all the crap that's happened to us. You, burnin' rubber, _smiling_.' He looks at him and Juice can nearly believe he's saying it made him happy. 'I didn't want to question that. D'yeh understand?'

And yeah, he does. Chibs' fingers are warm on the back of his palm.


	5. Chapter 5

He's back a fortnight later.

Juice can feel the goofy half smile rising to his face and the words dying on his tongue. He wants to tell him he shouldn't be here because his presence confuses Juice horribly, and he's done with fearing and loving him at the same time. Instead he just opens the door wide and steps back as if to say: look how much space I have for you. Chibs nods towards the Xanax on the side table.

'Those any good? I could do wi' a soft edge on things today.'

He laughs a little bit.

'Knock yourself out.'

Today Chibs looks nearly at ease there, only a space between them, putting his feet up on the stool with a grunt.

'You want a beer as well? Look like you need one.'

He doesn't make a point not to ask about club business; he knows it's not his place. His eagerness is obvious, all the same, when Chibs brings it up unprompted. He swigs from the bottle Juice brings him, while Juice leans on the doorframe, unobtrusive even in his own house.

'T.O.'s helpin' us... reintegrate. Build bridges. Lotta miles and a _lot_ of diplomacy.'

Not really Chibs' strong suit.

'T.O.?'

Juice is struggling with some feelings.

'That's what I said.'

'He's... patched?'

'Aye. We're makin' changes, tryin' ta carve out a future for Samcro. Bobby's legacy. It's what he worked so hard for.' He pauses. 'It's what Jax really wanted, underneath all the power plays.'

That one was still difficult to come to terms with, though he could see that it was probably the truth. He pushes his mixed feelings aside to get to the core gladness he feels for his club.

'That's... that's good. I'm glad...'

It hovers on his tongue and as usual finds its way out.

'I was an idiot with the black thing.'

He doesn't look to see a reaction but he can feel the waves of anger coming off Chibs soon as the words fall out of his mouth.

'It wasn't _race_.' His fury starts quiet but builds as if he can't stop the flow, 'It was that _you couldn't come to me_ with whatever problem was tearin' you up, big or small. We coulda fixed that. The Club coulda fixed that. What good is the table if you don't _believe_ in it, if you don't believe your brothers are there for you. If it's no right you _change_ it, _together_.'

He's yelling now, incandescent with the betrayal he's been holding back all this time.

'We _loved_ you, Juice.'

And they both know what this means.

'You took yourself away from us, not me. I never wanted you gone.'

'I never wanted to leave, man, you know that. That was the last thing I wanted.'

Both are struggling to keep their emotions in check. Chibs looks back at him and sees Juice also on the verge of tears, longing mirrored in each others' faces. He grimaces, having accidentally revealed how personally he'd taken what went down - how personal his anger had been. 

Juice has firsthand experience of the compassion and sensitivity Filip Telford's outward persona doesn't show. He knows that, contrary to appearances, kindness can and does override all the rules Chibs holds dear. It's not that he'd been relying on it, back then, but was maybe holding onto just a spark of hope... If it had been just his actions on the table that day in the diner with Unser, he could have been moved. He had been, countless times, where Juice was involved - exceptions made, pleas spoken, leeway given, goalposts shifted.

His posture has slumped. He looks older. World weary. He has his elbows on his knees on Juice's sofa, looking equal parts chastened and resentful. Everything in Juice is pulled towards him; he wishes he could just move from the door and put a hand on his shoulder, sit beside him.

It wasn't that he ratted, it was that he broke the old man's heart. That was the stark truth Chibs couldn't own up to. He'd let him back in, again and again, and Juice had lied each time. The only way to deal with such a toxic relationship is to cut it off, painful as that is. Juice could see that clearer than ever now. He was the poison.

Chibs hadn't stopped caring, he had cared too bloody much. Being here right now was like reopening a staunched wound. He wasn't good at excesses of emotion, tended to blow a fuse or shout the house down, and this lad made him feel _too much_.

'You don't need to keep coming back here.'

'I know that. You think I'm doin yeh a fuckin favour?'

'I'm not an idiot. I know you're not there for me anymore.'

Him and Chibs were so straightforward in the old days. They connected on that basic level, because there was no bullshit and no pretence. Basically there wasn't much more to either of them than a liking for liquor and excitement and a simple life. Even in the club, fraternity existed alongside reticence, personal agendas and bad blood, but not with them.

The hurt's too deep to mend, but he has enough perspective to see Chibs for what he is.

'I just wanted to say, thank you. I've had a lot of time to think. A lot of shit went down cus of people lying to each other. I lied to myself. By the end my life was just one big web of lies. But you never lied, you never manipulated me for your own gain. I get that when you cut ties, you were being honest. That was real. More than I deserved.'

He steels himself to look up at Chibs.

'You were the best friend I had. '

He doesn't need to add _but I needed you and you weren't there_ , because Chibs already knows.

As if reading his thoughts, his eyes cut up to meet Juice's.

 'Yer sayin' you wouldn't rather I'd lied and stuck by you?'

Fuck you. He grits his teeth.

 'I am now.'

He wishes every word between them wasn't a thunderclap. God knows he isn't made for this existence, he's made for getting high watching daytime TV. Chibs can't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

'So this is it, is it?'

'I dunno, is it?'

Something in him snaps. He growls, low in his throat like an animal - throws Juice bodily against the wall of his living room. Juice panics. He doesn't really mean to throw a punch; just lashes out. Maybe some residue of self preservation has come back after all. The irony of its timing isn't lost on him. Adrenalin and fury cloud like a wet fog. Chibs steps back with a stunted groan and a hand to the side of his face. Juice registers what he's done just as Chibs' retributive anger flares bright and he lunges and then, just as sudden, Juice finds his arms tight about his brother's neck as they clinch in a vicious embrace.

It's bone-crushingly tight, has Juice's face pressed into Chibs' neck, full up with the _smell_ of him. Engine grease and single malt and something _citrus_ that's only Chibs. And just like everything fucking else it has him in tears, weeping silently into Chibs' leathers and hoping he doesn't notice. Chibs' hands loosen and then tighten again in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him so close his ribcage might snap. They hold on for dear life and when the embrace finally breaks they're both short on breath.

When Chibs eventually speaks it's not so much an answer as an accusation.

'I wasn't lying about shootin yerself in the head. Would've done it for you.'

He's definitely not one for the soft sell.

'That deathwish you carried around? I was done, boy. And every time I thought you'd reached the human limit, you let me down _again_.'

'I know. I know.'

'You think that's it?' He slams his shoulder blades back hard against the plaster, 'I had to put those walls up, Juice, I had to lock you out.'

He's blanked out and Chibs shakes his head in frustration, grabbing him by the shoulders. Juice looks wildly up at him. Through the rush of panic he sees Chibs curse his own quick temper, even as his vice like grip on Juice's shoulders tightens.

'I'm no gonna hurt yeh. Don't yeh get it?'

'I- I love you man. I didn't mean to fuck up.'

Reflex panic mechanisms have him reverting to type, back begging forgiveness for old sins like it's his factory settings. He's sunk back into a dank and sweaty space with the smell of Tully all around him - a uniquely repellent cocktail of sweat, aftershave and hair gel - and it's no good pushing back against the force cus there's nowhere to go... there's nowhere to go once Chibs has thrown him out and closed the door in his face, that's it. That's it. Standing on the sidewalk with the most gut wrenching feeling of loneliness.

'Do whatever,' his laugh is tired and edging on manic, 'What else can anyone do to me?'

It's a lie, because Chibs can still hurt him and will probably always have that power.

'I said I'm no gonna hurt yeh, and I meant it...' His hands shift almost imperceptibly, thumbs creeping up as if to cradle his face. 'Doesn't matter does it. None of it. They're just walls.'

He does his best to focus in on the words through all the feedback in his head but reality is shrinking like a pin prick in old movies. Looking woozily at the hard, set lines of Chibs' mouth, then the little creases at the edges of his eyes: he's bewildered - is he giving him an in? He's pretty certain Chibs' walls don't have any drawbridges.

There's no way. He's hopeless.

_The amounts of sweat men produce have never disgusted him like this before; the constant fruitiness of the underarms, the musk underneath the prison slacks. Worse, worse, knowing there's a little extra - a bead on the brow, a slick on the chest, he can feel it through two layers of fabric - just for him..._

'You havin' a panic attack?'

'I need a fucking shower. Right now.'

The unexpected loudness of his own voice is a clarion that shocks his ears and pushes him further inward.

'Look at me.'

That voice is soft, and its eyes are full of concern but not rage. His brother's sharp, quick, dark eyes. So full of feeling; not Tully's ironic, dead blue. Chibs is leaning in to put them face to face, to lock their gazes together, shutting out the rest of the world. A familiar thing, something he used to do when he cared. The steady eye contact calms Juice enough that he remembers to breathe, to feel the hands on his shoulders and remember whose they are.

When he's able to think, Juice makes some sense of it in his head. He's not letting him in, but he's showing a bit of himself. Telling him his hard exterior had been just that: an exterior. And in that, he's giving him hope.

He feels the slow scan of watchful eyes passing over him, but it doesn't make his skin crawl. It actually makes him feel less alone, less marooned. His watcher waits for Juice to look back before making any movement. Raising his eyebrows in a signal of truce, Chibs carefully withdraws his hands and Juice's noises die down.

 'How you feeling?'

'Better. Thanks.'

His legs are still wobbly which he tries to hide while Chibs steps away slowly, gives him space, returning to the far side of the couch.

'I'm sorry, I- get these... flashbacks...'

But he's not looking at him, he's nodding slowly to himself.

'I'm no leavin'.'

'What do you mean?'

Chibs takes his cellphone out of his pocket, turns it off and places it in the centre of the table.

'Me too.'

'What?'

'Was fooling myself that I could stop.' He sucks a breath in through his teeth while raking a hand back through his hair. 'I still love you, Juicy. Don't know if I ever stopped.'

Breath catches in Juice's throat. He's caught completely unawares and, unbidden, tears are streaming down his face. This was the sort of validation he'd given up hoping for. It's a two edged sword though, and it hurts nearly as much as it saves him - to hear from Chibs' own mouth that he wanted Juice gone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Including angsty ex-Catholic Chibs and some of the other guys making cameo appearances. This is like a 'behind the scenes' Chibs and Juice focused thing so the club doesn't feature much. I really dislike the casual racial generalizations so please excuse clumsy attempts to retain the mood of the show. Comments always appreciated!

 

The sun's blazing through the glass front of Scoops. It pools languidly on the chequered floor and wood panelling, warming his face and the back of the leather couch where he sits looking out at the street. He's having half formed thoughts of churches, icons, darkened altarpieces and stained glass windows back in the Old Country. It's taken him a while to figure out. He didn't know it standing in the wreckage of TM or in the wake of the tragedy at Diosa, even erecting various temporary tables in the back of warehouses out of backgammon boards. Church is where you make it.

He remains pensive when the creak of leather announces Tig's arrival beside him, absently observing the dust motes float in a little updraft by the door.

'Word is Juice is out.'

He drops this remark lightly, like an idle comment on the weather.

'Oh? I wouldn't know about tha'.'

Tig raps his knuckles against his knee, impervious as ever to Chibs' warning tone of voice.

'I know you man. You can't let that boy go.'

His mouth twitches as he finally turns to look at him with a familiar drily amused grimace, giving in to the relentless upbeatness.

'I know _you_ have a whole list of other shite you should be doin' righ' now.'

Tig coughs and stands to attention, clapping his hands. The dust scatters in a soft rain of golden sparks, his lanky figure cutting across the treacly light and throwing half of Chibs' face into shadow.

'Right you are boss! Hey, me and Rat gonna head down to Red Woody later if you're interested. Just check up on Lyla.'

He lays a steady hand on Chibs' shoulder, a signal that doesn't need words. Chibs' silence is answer enough.

'We'll be in the back, brother.'

He doesn't reply.

 _Did you tell the guys?_ Juice had asked him last time, looking sheepish. Go on and look sheepish, he'd thought, you know full well if I had we wouldn't both be sitting here. _What do you think? No. Best for everyone you stay AWOL._

 

 

 

He's not even afraid, not logically - what else could they do to him?

They'd come out the shadows and he's still not a hundred percent sure that they're actually there because in his mind every shadow has held a threat long as he can remember. But these faces aren't the same ones from his nightmares. Sure, they look like Lin's crew, but he's never seen these particular guys before.

One guy has both hands at his throat, his associates have spread out to watch the exitways. He goes limp, not so much as a survival tactic, more a pre-programmed response. He's not logically afraid. But it's the first time since back then that someone has had their hands on him with ill intent. And it's terrifying, in a way he couldn't possibly have been prepared for - _logically_ doesn't even factor. Muscle memory sets in, disordering his rational brain. Everything is fragmenting around him. The blurriness that is despair combined with a soup of medication weighs him down like lead, and for once he wishes he could actually just fucking think straight. Everything                         fragmenting. What scares him is that the guy's not saying anything.             Nothing.              This gets done.                               The walls of the alleyway appear to collapse in on themselves as the walls of his heart constrict.                        Distortion.

                                                                                                 Fun house mirrors                       a zinc grey flash of sky...  

'What you waiting for? Here I am.'

And here he is, spread out on his back on the asphalt under their feet. Ready and willing like a good little boy.

He blinks, seeing an impossible amount of Chinamen, all replicating the same suited figure                       sure there'd only been a dozen of them a minute ago                        blood, maybe, between his teeth, blood and grit, and he's laughing through it at the thought of hundreds of identically dressed Chinamen                       it's like being killed by a troup of circus performers. Why haven't they done it already?...

'You wanna have a go first just get on with it. I've seen it all before. No need to be shy. '

10, 11, 12                       trying to count the teeming bodies but they shrink, needle thin, and then                      whiteout.

He comes to, to a big white sky. Sudden disturbed yells. Turning his head and the world shifts sickeningly. There are only half a dozen of them and they're not dressed the same at all. Just his head fucking him up. But that's nothing to the monumental headfuck he has when he realises the source of the commotion. They've backed off him and look torn between fight or flight. Pulling up just outside the alley, almost out of his line of sight, is a group of guys in Reapers. Definitely not a dream. This is much worse. His heart hammers hard against his ribcage. Rat, Tig, Montez, they're all there. They look confused, conflicted. And he would gladly go back to having the shit kicked out of him instead of this. He didn't think it was possible to feel this exposed.

There, tearing across the alley and straight for the man stood above him - is Chibs, face like flint. The others hesitate, but fall in behind him, setting upon the Chinese with hands and feet and - oh shit! A wrench, really? Chibs looks like death in the second before his fist cuts up under the guy's chin and sends him flying. A fury clearly intended for someone else with his skin tone. There's just the thwack of the back of his head hitting the road with full force.

Juice can't face right now the thought that what he said to this man might've been heard. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck all his psychoses that are refrigerating his heart and immobilising his limbs so he wilts into the ground. Fuck them for making it impossible to just look strong in front of Chibs.

He's vaguely aware of someone crouching down in front of him; a voice shaping his name, again and again. He smiles, just to let him know he's here, he understands, and realises his nose is bleeding when a metallic taste fills his mouth. He lifts himself off the floor, staunching the flow of blood with his sleeve. Chibs has an arm around him and is supporting his weight, lifting him to his feet, guiding him towards a low wall. He sits with palms spread flat against the rough brick at his sides, head spinning, vaguely aware that Chibs is crouching down before him again. A couple of the Chinese guys are lying against the wall, nursing injuries. The rest have scattered.

Chibs looks back over his shoulder. His voice is as hard as he looks right now. 

'Head back. I've got this.'

Tig and Rat exchange a doubtful look.

'GO!'

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

'You're comin' wi' me.'

He says it briskly, with no room for manoeuvring. As often happens in times of conflict and confrontation his brogue thickens; rougher and less accommodating. It's like he forgets to pause between words, rolling them into one slurred protest. That Scots coarseness doesn't usually go down well with outsiders. Like a slap in the face, or the bark of the attack dog brought to the meet deliberately to make them feel stupid. It must still cause friction for the club's dealings now that he's at the head of the table.

Juice knows him, though, and knows that voice intimately as one of his peculiar idiosyncrasies. More than this it's a mark of feeling, real feeling, and right now it does something weird to his insides. He hears his good intentions.

'Gonnae have to ride... on the back.'

 _Bitch_ , he'd have to ride _bitch_. It's way out of character for Chibs to censor himself and Juice thinks again about what he said when he was lying at the feet of his attacker, but he's too wiped to care. Moving is like wading through wet cement. It's all he can do to stumble across in the wake of Chibs' sure strides holding himself with one arm and wondering if his ribs are broken because every step sends a shock of impact through his torso.

He's flagging fast standing up like this, and Chibs is already tugging his helmet in place so he clambers onto the back of the Harley. The kick and rumble of the engine shaking against his legs surges up in a feeling of safety and control. He's missed riding so intensely. With this familiarity the adrenalin drains away and he wilts forward against Chibs' back. He's weak and brittle and despite the security knows he hasn't got the strength to stay upright on the back of a moving Harley. But as he's pushing himself up, Chibs reaches back and gently takes one of his balled fists in his own gloved hand, pulling Juice's arm close around him.

When the wind hits his face he feels like he can finally breathe again, winded in the sudden acceleration, filling his lungs with cold night air and dust kicked up by the tyres. His fingers knot in Chibs' leathers, aware as soon as the cold air slices along his forearms of the body warm and solid against him. Without a helmet his eyes stream but he doesn't mind, pressing the side of his face against leather as the lights along the highway dissolve and stream by in a golden rush.

He's never ridden like this with Chibs or anyone, or experienced this weirdly intense kind of closeness. It's not his hands on the handlebars but the sensation of the night around and under him and in motion is heady as it ever was. It's a zen state; that sort of happiness that stretches like it'll go on forever. The combined intensity of the whole thing is exhausting. He'd be happy to just fall asleep with his forehead pressed into the warm dark of Chibs' back, the vibration of the road in his bones and the roaring hum of crosswinds in his ears.

But as soon as the rhythm of tyres against road has smoothed out into that endless cadence and feeling of freedom, they're pulling up outside Chibs' place. He stands in the driveway, shaken by tremors that won't stop now that cold and exhaustion hit him fully, unsure about what's expected here. Chibs just strides straight in leaving the front door wide behind him so he wavers a bit and then follows. 

 

 

He's already in the kitchen pouring from a half empty bottle of Jamesons into two tumblers sat amongst a small pile of dirty dishes next to the sink. There's the remains of some kind of chicken pie or something and a couple of empty takeout boxes, a tin of boot polish and a carton of engine coolant. The sight is oddly consoling, like a hand unclenching around his heart, his uncertainty at being here mixing with an easy warmth. He'd like to be able to give in to the house's promises of homeliness and comfort. The bite and warmth of whisky sinking through his chest is welcome and medicinal. He speaks before the illusion of ease can insinuate itself any further under his skin.

'Why don't you just let them get me? Could stir up a whole lotta shit getting in the way, shit you're trying to get past. Keeping all Lin's guys at bay, negotiating, it'll be more trouble than it's worth.'

'Because I don't want you to die, Juice.'

It's the simplest thing he's said to him so far. Juice accepts it. For most people it would be self evident, but as it is, it needs saying. It hasn't always felt like that. He just nods. That painful thing in his stomach twists a little bit.

Chibs turns away again because it's too unpleasant for him. He's starting to learn that it might be possible to respect a man who has little to no respect for himself, or at least, he's trying. It means reacting with gentleness when he still just wants to shake the shit out of him and ultimately, although it still hurts to admit it, to leave him by the wayside. All the codes he's ever subscribed to tell him a man who thinks he's more trouble than he's worth is worth no trouble. It means telling himself he can learn to love Juice as a coward, as a rat, as brave and honest and good, as all the things that he is. And maybe that means he already does.

He wouldn't be able to put it into words but is plagued by the guilt that Juice has always deserved someone better, someone who doesn't have to try. That everyone deserves better than the fickle, conditional love they get. Maybe it's his divided Catholic soul - sin, repent, hate yourself and God for the necessity of repentance. The tawdriness and hypocrisy of that ritual. In some ways his lashing out - _Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing? -_ are lashing out at himself. At his failure to love completely enough. His attempts at patience always had a limit.

There's a quiet trust in the eyes fixed on his back. Juice has been sure of him all along, knows the depth and endurance of what he feels, knew it even when things were darkest. Chibs can't look at him now, avoiding the acceptance he knows he'd find in his large soft eyes, the generosity of spirit that still softens something in Chibs' core that no one else has quite managed to reach. It's a generosity born of seeing the best in people.

'Sit down,' he says firmly but softly.

Juice winces as he sits on the edge of a wooden chair, letting Chibs lift the back of his shirt and run a cursory hand over his back, humming in disapproval at what he finds. He feels  greasy, gritty and spent of energy in the way you do after a workout, with none of the satisfaction.

Upstairs Chibs digs a faded blue towel out of the cupboard and tosses it at him across the room. He's stood in the doorway of the bedroom like an idiot, too tired to even attempt to conceal his awkwardness.

Chibs chucks a spare shirt and pair of underpants onto the bed.

'You can sleep here. I'll have the couch. Go take a shower.'

The scalding water drives away some of the tension in his muscles, a little of the degradation of the last couple of hours and for a few thoughtless minutes the deep sadness that seems to originate somewhere down in his bones. The keenly bittersweet tang of memories prompted by being here washes away. He re-enters Chibs' bedroom with a shy smile, gleaming and reddened and running with water with the towel around his waist, looking almost whole. The smile falls away when he catches Chibs' pensive expression as his eyes scan the marks across Juice's torso.

'Jesus. It hurt?'

'Yeah, uh, a little.'

He's not sure when Chibs came across the room or how he moved that quickly, but he stands now closer than is comfortable. He's pushing his sleeves up past his elbows, wearing that shrewd expression he gets sometimes. Cold fingers drift across the left side of his chest, where the word 'shine' is yellowed by bruising. Juice shivers, half steps backwards.

'Uh, I-' he covers, excusing his jumpiness, but Chibs doesn't seem to have noticed; too busy rifling through drawers for something. He's happy to be instructed because it lets him turn his brain off so he follows Chibs' nod towards the bed.

Chibs stops short reaching for the first aid kit in the bathroom cabinet, his mouth involuntarily quirking upwards in amusement; the kid can barely stand but he's rearranged the couple of bottles in the shower and neatly folded his clothes over the side of the bathtub.

He kneels behind him on the bed with a joint between his teeth and glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose. Unhesitating but careful hands are all over the wet shower-hot skin of Juice's back; doggedly applying antiseptic to wounds and abrasions; checking for broken ribs. Peace settles over them in the quiet haze of lamplight and weed smoke as, slowly, Juice is patched up and pieced together. He's woozy and exhausted and it's ok because Chibs is entirely capable and his two hands are holding him together. Twisting around to take the joint, he takes him in: sat back on his haunches, black sweater and black eyes through the mist of purple haze, focused and lackadaisical all at once. He lapses back into this persona of medic and Juice has always found it kinda reassuring. All deft sharp hands, controlled movements; resolute, purposeful. Shit, he's kinda stoned. He sighs aloud in relief as it floods his body, tingling and sensitised where Chibs' fingers test the right of his spine and brush his shoulder blade. The cool night breeze through the half open window dries his skin and Chibs' sure hands finish up a final dressing on his shoulder.

'Nothin's broken, far as I can tell.'

'Thanks.' He risks a glance up at Chibs and is struck by the dark shadows across his face.

'Man, you look wiped, I'll just have the couch. It's fine.'

'Hey, stop with that shite. You're a mess. There's room enough for two.'

His heart jumps a little. He tells himself it's because going from death threats to this is a little hard to come to terms with, although he doesn't even pretend he isn't thankful for the human contact. When the lights go off and he isn't alone in the dark with _everything_ he silently blesses Lin's crew for kicking the living shit out of him. The blankets are warm and smell like Chibs and behind him there's the dip in the mattress of another person and the gruff sound of breathing and then Juice is gone.

 

 

 

In the early hours sleep lifts from Juice and he lies there in the odd quiet watching the other body sleeping next to him. It's a cold time. Clay's face comes to him, vivid in the moments before his death as if it's now. Chibs stood beside him then, as guilty as he is for that deed.

It'd be nothing out of the ordinary, but he's never actually slept this close to him before. There was that one time they'd both woken up sprawled on the pool table at the clubhouse. His head had felt like it'd been steamrollered and the guys were in fits at catching them all cosied up - Chibs flat out on his back, dead to the world, and Juice with an arm and leg slung over him and no recollection of how he'd got there. Tig had found it particularly amusing, having had a comfortable night on the couch with three girls half his age. _'Looks like someone got their balls in the pocket.'_

He lies on his back with his right arm flung above his head and his chest exposed in the bone-white wash of light through the slats. Juice looks at him; washed in silver, unguarded in sleep. Just for a while, cus it seems intrusive seeing him like this. Looks a bit like he's underwater, skin like it'd be cool and satiny to the touch, and there's a graceful submerged look to the looseness of his resting limbs. He's strong, stronger than Juice, but sometimes lately it looks as if he's in so much pain he can barely stand. Funny, that Juice only thinks this now, and not in the twenty four hours of every other day Chibs is fighting just to keep going. It makes Juice feel so small. Like a little kid, he just curls under all the bedclothes he's stolen, wrapped tight around him and up over his shoulders. It's too easy to forget the weight of it - the man has lost too many friends, seen too many things. He looks lonelier. When do any of them get any relief? He rolls over with a sleep roughened moan, and Juice stiffens in expectation of the coldness he'll see in his eyes but there's only a slow and sleepy recognition. Instead of recoiling from the shock of finding a traitor in his bed he mumbles Juice's name with a raspy softness and rolls towards him, already half asleep, just desperate for some kind of warmth.

They're both so exhausted they don't even move to turn away from each other and wake up tumbled together, Chibs' leg caught between Juice's thighs. He closes his eyes, just to drift off like this for a minute...

And doesn't wake up again til sun is streaming in under the blinds and his cellphone's ringing in the pocket of the pants he left folded on the tub.

'Early start. Turns out runnin' an ice cream shop's hard work. Who knew?'

'You want me to clear out?'

'No, lie in if you want, til yer well enough. Coffee's by the sink.'


	8. Chapter 8

'S'open.'

He's back at Juice's place a few days later. Juice is sitting there all bruised up in his PJs and wrapped in bedding with a playstation controller gripped in both hands. The sounds of simulated gunshots ring loud from the sound system he's rigged up, the only thing of any value in the room.

'Gotta finish this level.'

Chibs raises his hands in deference while another member of the undead is brought down with a godawful screeching.

'Aye, don't mind me.'

He settles in beside the lad to watch him.

'You drinkin' _chocolate milk_?'

The very idea clearly offends his sensibilities. A whittled Glaswegian menace; pretty arms and shoulders that could break a man's neck. Somewhere in there was a kid scrapping on the street and eating out of tins who never quite assimilated into the sunshine state's gym-ready protein shake lifestyle. This kind of scruffy slender brutality always gave the charter an edge. Juice frowns. He remembers what that looked like as a prospect. He bought the whole fucking package, man. He grits his teeth as he slices the head clean off a zombie. Chibs is still digesting the notion of chocolate milk.

'Christ alive, yer like the brown milky bar kid. Cut you open yeh'd be full of sugar an' spice an' medical-grade green.'

He just furrows his brow in tolerant bemusement.

'Where'd you get all these mixed metaphors anyway? The fuck's the milky bar kid?'

But Chibs isn't listening.

'Wha'?'

He'd got caught up in a half finished thought about the smell of clean skin and corn snacks and weed before realising with a weird pang that that was the smell of Juicy. Travelled continents from slate grey Gorbals tenements across the meanest Republican districts and US gangland to end up pining for a kid wrapped in his duvet playing video games.

Juice winces and shifts.

'You want to let me check those dressings?'

He sighs in acquiescence, and pulls his shirt up under his arms as he twists around to allow access to his back, the duvet pooling around his waist. Chibs pushes his glasses up his nose.

'Aye, gonna need to wash these.'

Juice rests his head on his arms against the arm of the couch while Chibs disappears from the room, returning with a wet washcloth which he begins to dab against the open wounds. It's a while before he's able to say what's been preying on his mind, and the words are muffled against his arms.

'Just wanted you to know I'm not weak.'

He doesn't answer, pulling back and reapplying plasters and applying gentle pressure with his fingertips to the spill of bruises across Juice's left side. Juice thinks it'll be silent again like it was the other night, but he begins to murmur softly as he works, as if to himself. Juice doesn't catch everything, especially the parts that lapse back into a stronger Scots dialect of his childhood. He's never talked like this before, at least not in Juice's presence, and he's quiet and still in fear of shaking him out of it.

'Yeh're soft. S'wha' my ma would've said. Soft lad. S'no a bad thing, mind. I just never got the chance, wisnae allowed back then. Girls the same. Hard lasses, they'd chew you up and spit you out, Juicy boy...'

He grins roguishly into the crook of his arms.

'Sounds good to me.'

He knows Chibs is smiling behind him, slipping back into that easy joking give and take they'd always had.

'Aye. Soft's not weak though. Yeh're tough too.' He fixes a bandage just beneath the curve of his right shoulder blade. 'That's a powerful combination... You've been through the sawmill, boy. You're good.'

With that he tugs down Juice's shirt and folds his glasses away in a pocket of his cut. Juice doesn't seem to want to turn around and meet his gaze.

'You can't keep doing this, not now the club know about me. The Pres making house calls on a rat ex-member? Shit, it's weird, never mind totally against all the rules.'

But he brushes this statement off with an irritable shrug of his shoulders, dislodging it like a bit of dirt on his jacket.

'Fuck the _rules_.'

He hears the grimace Chibs makes at his own cheesiness but his heart is tripping queasily over his ribs.

'And you don't have to do 200 on the freeway outrunnin' the law every time you want me on your side. I never meant you to feel like you had to prove yerself to me.'

'You didn't. Make me feel that. I always wanted to look good for you.'

He doesn't even have the energy to mitigate this statement so it sounds less... fucking desperate. All he ever does these days is lay himself bare in one way or another. Yeah, his self-esteem is out the window, but so is his tolerance for bullshit. It makes him come out with stuff, things he didn't know he was thinking half the time.

It itches under his skin. Because when did this turn into sharing and caring time? He's grateful, he really is, but he's also sick of feeling like a headcase. The _incident_ this week meant he missed seeing his shrink - again. And it's just another in a long list of fuckups. After he turned up with the President of Samcro as his driver, he knows they'll almost definitely ascribe any irregular behaviour to his old life dragging him back down again. Which, well, isn't too far off in this case. This fringe, in-between lifestyle is infinitely wearing. What he wouldn't give to be back _in_ again, everything and all of him. But he won't ever have that back, any more than he can be normal.

It's stupid - irrational - because he started it and it isn't Chibs' fault, but he hears himself snap.

'Enough. It's too heavy, man.'

He shrugs, feeling like there's an actual physical weight on his shoulders, trying to say that he needs some downtime. He needs to _relax_ , to avoid another earth shattering conversation so that this clogging mist might lift just for a while. Cus he needs that. He needs that just to have any chance of continuing.

Chasing this train of thought is the sudden fear that he's scared him off and he's about to get up and leave, because no matter what Chibs says, he's unsure that circumstances will allow them to keep seeing each other like this. But a nervous glance shows  him Chibs hasn't made any move to go. He's sitting stoically, patiently waiting for him to sort through whatever's on his mind. Sometimes it hits Juice hardest when he's there right in front of him; how he misses Chibs like hell. Like a hole in his chest.

He throws him a weak apologetic smile.

'We had something good. I wish... If only we could get back to that.'

Searching his brother's face for clues, he finds a quiet assurance that gives him strength in all this confusion.

'Don't think we're goin backwards at all, Juicy.'

Juice flexes, testing his new bandages. Still sore. A dull ache ripples outwards from his core when he breathes in too deep. 

'You wanna stick around and watch a movie or something?' he says with forced lightness, as if it really doesn't matter at all.

Chibs is always tired these days, and Juice is weary down in his soul, and they're both out for the count on the couch before Total Recall is done. Chibs' last waking thought had been that this movie was a load of shite and he'd only tolerate it in deference to Juice. Or if he'd consumed a lot of alcohol. Juice is cocooned in his blankets and flushed by warmth, one forearm resting loosely over the covers, looking impossibly young in sleep. With one leg slung over its other arm, Chibs has sunk down in the couch so that he's slid against Juice's shoulder. Their chests rise and fall slowly side by side.


	9. Chapter 9

A spitting crunching sound of a slowing engine outside his window wakes Juice up one Friday a couple of weeks later.

He'd been itching with withdrawal, wanting to go and find him. To show that he too was willing to step out of line for this thing, to do almost anything, and that it didn't have to be him coming to Juice every time. But it would be irresponsible and endanger him too much. The last thing he wants to do is jeopardize his brother's standing with the club.

Juice stumbles out of his shroud of blankets on the couch, dry mouthed, and out into a blaze of sunlight. The front step is hot on his bare feet.

There's a knocked up old Harley sat in the driveway at the front of Juice's yard. In front of it, an unmistakable guy wearing a reaper stoops down to tinker with the bodywork. The reaper emblazoned across his back speaks of death, and ends, and belonging. It tells Juice everything about how he nearly went out for good for this club and about what is still here for him now. The guy turns with a flick of greying hair, a crooked smile, and a wash of warm Summer light glinting off the rims of his shades. Crystallized by this moment, looking as real and warm and touchable as the sun warmed asphalt of the driveway.  

His clumsy gestures of tenderness Juice is here for in every way. He has all the patience in the world for those slow moments. It's ten in the morning and the sun is rising hot over California and Chibs' lopsided smile promises every slight kindness he could want.

'You're riding that heap of junk?'

'Naw, this beauty is for you.'

'Oh.'

A bike, _for him_. Chibs' grin stretches so his cheeks crease and his white teeth flash, all wayward invitation.

'Thought we could pick up an ounce from yer shop, head out West for a couple of days.'

It's the promise of a long drive. A whole weekend. An escape. He's tentative; it all sounds too good to be true.

'You wanna ride with me after what happened last time? Seriously?'

'Aye, deadly serious.'

'Don't you, like... have Pres shit to do?'

'Stop stallin' Juice. Grab yer lunch box. Or you got something better planned?'

Cheeky fuck, course he's got nothing better planned.

'Yeah, yeah ok then.'

Truth is, he can't fucking wait to get his ass on that piece of shit bike. When he does he has no idea how he's managed this long without it. So stupidly grateful to this hunk of junk he never wants to ride another bike again; he'll keep her out back and tenderly restore her to her old beauty, redo the scabbed paintwork, source all the out of order replacement parts. Just the thought has his heart soaring a mile above the road that slips past under the wheels.

He feels free.

It's even a little better than that ride behind Chibs because nothing can really compare to the feeling of being in control of a Harley. And Chibs is never far away, riding alongside him so that it feels a bit like old times. Except now it's just them. He kinda likes it this way.

They ride well into the afternoon, pulling over at a truck stop just as the sun sinks onto the horizon. Chibs is grumbling and complaining about aches and pains before he's got a leg off and Juice laughs, naturally and abruptly. The red dust kicks up under Chibs' boots. Juice sits on the side of the road looking out over the empty dusty fields and finds he doesn't know what to say. Time passes as he tries valiantly to hold onto this fragile happiness and stop the darkness creeping in at the corners.

'What're yeh scared of?'

He jumps a little, not having noticed Chibs sit down beside him.

'... Us.'

'Aye.'

He sounds like he knows exactly what this means.

'Are you... taking me back?'

They share a smile at the choice of words. Chibs raises his eyebrows.

A man of contradictions. Of an occasionally frightening capacity for violence, a rough humour, and unusually sophisticated sensitivity.

'What's this look like to you?' He asks gently.

Juice is debris in orbit around him, Chibs himself the little bit of home he can't let go of but can't get back to, and he wants nothing else than to pick up all the little pieces of warmth that are rekindling when he looks back on what he'd thought had gone sour and pull him in to his gravity.

'I know it's no easy for you either. Christ, far back as the shit with Jax and Clay...' he swallows, still a sore subject, 'You can't trust that I've got your back anymore.'

Juice just nods.

'What I'm tryin' ta say is... I understand, if it takes time...'

It sounds a lot like he's trying to apologise. A perverse part of Juice has to enjoy this turning of the tables and the spectacle of this hopelessly stubborn man trying his damndest to be flexible, though it's not with any malice.

'I'm no asking you to look past it. The time will come when we'll be able to sort through a' tha'. But I'm hangin' around. That's all you need to know.'

 Juice looks at him. Really looks.

He figures it's time for honesty.

When you've faced up to the reality the words are nothing. He doesn't stumble or hesitate once, speaking in a slow flat monotone that sounds rehearsed although it's not.

'I got nothing to hide from you anymore. I was raped. The Chinese. And Tully. More than... a lot.' He waits a beat and drops the question, so that it sounds almost incidental, but weighted. 'Did you know?'

He gets up off the stoop and leaves Juice sitting there without a word. Round the side of the building and past the bushes, Chibs leans one arm up against the wall and retches. Hard.

 

 

It's some time before Chibs gets back. Juice has been sat tranquilly smoking, considering his feelings with a mild disinterest. He's pissed that he walked off like that at just that moment and left him on his own, but that's ok. Now he's back beside him. They sit silent.

Chibs clears his throat.

'You said something, back in the alleyway when the Chinese got to you. You were out of it and I didn't hear right but... I had a feeling. I didn't want to think it might be true.'

Juice smiles.

'That's why you gave that guy such a beating.'

'Aye, I guess it was.'

Juice is brittle and hard faced, to anyone else he'd appear indifferent to everything. Chibs realises instinctively he's preparing himself to be looked at with disgust and left forever. It hurts.

‘I knew and I didn’t know. I never looked at the facts. Juice… ’

There weren't words.

As soon as it was clear Chibs wouldn't abandon him Juice softened, leaning unconsciously inwards. Always quick to comfort, to do his bit.

'Hey... hey, you don't have to blame yourself.'

He takes the risk and reaches across to cover the Pres's hand with his own even though they don't _do_ touching anymore. His heart jumps a little in fear when Chibs twists and grabs that hand but then it's ok, it's more than ok, and he throws him a nervous smile.

'I thought you knew, Chibby. If I die, if _I'd died_ , it's not on you. It was never on you.'


	10. Chapter 10

He hangs back when they approach the motel reception desk, darting his eyes around the shabby foyer. He probably looks shifty as hell shadowing a lone biker. A dark stripe of hair that is mostly due to neglect edges his face and covers his head tatts, which makes him feel less himself but also makes it easier to pass as just some cholo. Shocking how easy it is to turn yourself into an anonymous brown body. This far from the safety of his apartment he feels the need to hide yawn and grow. He hovers back behind Chibs with his jittery movements and his nondescript civilian clothes, black hoodie pulled down over his hands and face. Feels like they should be up to something nefarious. This place is dirty and unfamiliar, which makes his skin start to crawl if he thinks about it for too long. He feels distinctly ill at ease and on the edge of laughter at the same time, and in a sudden desperation nudges Chibs’ shoulder and mutters:

‘One room?’

To his relief, the idea seems to amuse him.

‘Hello love,’ Chibs leans in close to the plexiglass divide, all ease and smiles, ‘can we get a double room please?’

Her eyes drift across his leathers, his patch, and over his shoulder to his skulking young companion.

‘How long are you staying?’

‘One night of passion.’

He actually winks at her, Christ. Words balanced just on the edge of humour. The long look she gives him says she obviously can’t be sure that he’s joking, but she tosses them the room keys. And he throws an arm ostentatiously around Juice’s shoulders before leading him away up the corridor.

‘I thought we were trying to be inconspicuous,’ Juice says when the door shuts behind them, mildly irritated that for him it’s just a charade to mess with the woman behind the desk. Never mind that Juice is genuinely terrified of his own company. Chibs is flicking the switch on the ugly fringed table lamp on the nearest cabinet, pulling the flowered curtain across the window.

‘She’s seen worse. Doesn’t give two shites about us.’

But Juice doesn’t even have to ask before he’s pushing the two single beds together. He raises his eyebrows.

'This why you brought me out here?'

The corners of his mouth are twitching even as his stomach heaves with emotion and the adrenalin leaks out leaving him sapped and needing to sit down. The joke catches when Chibs glances back over his shoulder and laughter flickers across his face.

‘Let’s keep it PG, eh?’

‘Yeah? Those jokes still funny to you?’

He’s still smiling, maybe with relief, but Chibs isn’t. Looks like he’s second guessing himself. Flicks thin bits of hair from his eyes with a shake of the head like he’s wondering what on earth he’s doing trying to sleep in the same bed as Juice like a fucking nutcase. Like he’s catching crazy.

‘Ah, fuck.’

'No, wait, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.'

Fuck, _yes_ , please hold me.

He’s not sure if it’s the admission of his multiple rape that’s bought another night in close quarters but he’s not about to jeopardize it. Probably best not to mention how they’d ended up last time, legs all confused like that. Not in an inappropriate way or anything, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d tell people. Maybe this desperate, intimate, back-from-the-dead thing was weirder than that anyway. Weirder than whatever the receptionist thought they were doing. Especially the second time around. He slumps onto the mattress before Chibs can change his mind and reaches for the weed in his bag, grinds a few buds into a coarse dust with a repetitive back and forth motion. The older guys, Chibs included, usually skinned up old school: he’d pick the dense bud apart with a sharp dance of fingers, scatter it through the rolling paper like fairy dust, and lick the crystals off the pads of his index fingers as if he was about to stamp an envelope. Juice has this tacky dime store grinder they sold to stoner kids at the weed shop. Counts out the rotations under his breath as a panic relief.

‘You seriously think a couple of jokes about gays are gonna make it any worse? It’s done. You can picture it every time you look at me for all I care. Changes nothing.’

Faintly nauseated, he lies against the pillows and takes a hit. He’s gonna pop a couple of tranquilizers as well. It’s been a day. Looking sideways at the pair of legs set widely apart across the room, he thinks about the things he would no doubt do to Tully if he got the chance and feels reassured.

There’s no way he could communicate that the act wasn’t even the worst of it, it was just part of a larger process of dehumanisation. The routine humiliation, the mind games, the use of drugs in fostering dependence, the racial coding and degradation, the separation of mind from body, the complete mindless endlessness of it all. He draws a deep lungful of smoke and holds it out to him.

‘Come over here, man.’

‘I’m no lookin’ at you any different,’ he says, as he hooks the blunt out gently from between Juice’s fingers.

The smoke curls out of his mouth up over his face and into the loose strands of his hair as he considers Juice softly.

‘You wanna know, huh?’

Of course he does. Wants to know every detail of what they’ve done to him, so he can feel it. Feel the pain and let it tear him up; measure retribution in bloody detail.

‘I do.’

Juice looks back at him. At last, this is a knowledge he has that Chibs does not. That he can spare him.

‘No. You don’t.’ He pops a couple of capsules out of their foil packaging and dry swallows. Should be enough to knock him flat out but he’s never sure. Looks him dead in the eyes. ‘I mean it, it’s done. There’s no action against the AB, Lin’s people, nobody. It was by the book, the way it had to go. And I paid for my shit. If you wanted to stop it, you would’ve done it then.’

‘You’re gonna tell me how to run my club now, eh?’ he answers with wrung-out affection, tugging the black hood down off Juice’s head. ‘You didn’t pay for _anythin’_. No club would ever ask you for that, no matter what you’ve got to pay back.’

‘It wasn’t really a choice,’ Juice says drily.

The marks from his brush with Lin’s crew are still visible on his face, although some stubble now shades his jaw and head. Not the first time he’s worn the marks of some kind of punishment around. Chibs thumbs over the bruising on the apple of his cheek.

‘I’ve laid hands on you. I’m no saint.’

‘You been thinking about this?’

As he peels the riding gloves from his fingers he looks at the narrow curves of his knuckles like they might be weapons.

‘You’re right about me. I’m thinkin about getting masel’ locked up just so I can lynch that Kentucky-fried Nazi fucker with my own two hands, and then pour acid down the back of his eyeballs, but…’

‘That old testament shit never did any of us any good. You know that. Chibbie...'

His lips curl back.

'Don't call me tha'.' But it's half hearted. The gloves fall from between his thumb and index finger. ‘Were you ever afraid of me?’

‘No. Never of you.’

He folds himself onto the other side of the makeshift bed. The pale lozenge of his mouth still twists upward in a sneer of distaste, like his whole attitude towards the world. Juice fixates on it. He can’t find the energy to do more than move his hand the inch up to his face to inhale. They lie face to face and he snags the spliff from Juice’s hand again. A symmetry is made by the crescent slashes on his cheeks and the curve of his high brows. Some girls in Queens used to pluck their eyebrows thin as a line of pencil to get that lifted look that was alert and dangerous, and you knew those girls were for real, like not to be messed with, but knew they looked good on top of that. He’d give them a wide birth but admire them from a distance.

‘What else would you do to Tully?’

‘I’d slash the tendons behind his knees,’ his lips stretch in a grimace-smile as smoke leaks between his front teeth, ‘and then I’d cut his balls off and feed em to him down a tube. I’d put a leash around his neck and drag his Aryan backside along the ground where other dogs could piss all over him.’

‘Mm.’

The spliff is back in his mouth and he doesn’t remember who put it there.

‘And _then_ …’

‘Stop, man,’ he laughs, and he feels good, really good for a second. So it has to stop. ‘I only feel really… awake, when I’m driving fast or hurting myself or thinking about hurting someone like him. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.’

‘What about the rest of the time?’

‘Nothing. I don’t feel anything. Like a ghost.’ The downers are making him fuzzy and soft as if he were a ghost right now. ‘You ever gonna talk to the club about me? Sometimes it feels like I don’t really exist.’

‘Some of em don’t even know who yeh are. You’re way off the radar now.’

‘Tig, and Rat…’

‘Aye, they know somethin. Best it stays off the table.’ He must see some kind of fatalism in Juice’s face because he adds, ‘I’m the President of Redwood Original, nothin goes past me if I don’t want it to. No one can touch you.’

This might be technically untrue, but the other members had never had any real kind of vendetta against him anyway. It had been Chibs who’d told him to put a gun in his mouth.

‘Then why?’

‘No point in going through all that official shite wi’ you barely hangin’ on to the world of the living, is there?’

Neither of them mention Mayhem, or the ritual torching of traitors’ skin, or any of the things that can result from a club’s collective judgement of ex members. It is no longer the stuff of nightmares for Juice, who has suffered worse and hidden for too long. Eventually they go silent with what has been said between them. Juice is so exhausted he could sleep for the whole 48 hours they’re out here, or at least until tomorrow afternoon when they’ll hustle a fry up off the motel staff and sit out in the orange sunshine watching the hills bronze across the horizon. Chibs puts the TV on in the room, kisses Juice’s forehead roughly, beard scratching across his skin.

‘If they ever cross my path they’re dead men. Even if we weren’t good.’

His voice dances between consonants and vowels like his movements.

‘I know,’ he says, eyes closed. ‘Are we good?’

‘Good as it gets.’

It’s ambiguous. He’ll take it.


	11. Chapter 11

'Got to make a visit to Red Woody. Want to tag along?'

They're back in Charming and Chibs seems to be making an effort to draw links between business and Juice.

'Uhh...'

Truthfully the idea of stepping on club turf terrifies him, as does being surrounded by people, not least the girls at Red Woody, who make nobodies feel like the centre of attention on a daily basis. He's got a feeling what once would've charmed and excited him would now seem like a charade. His biggest fear, though, Chibs predicts.

'Don't worry, it's just me an' a couple o' prospects. You can sit in the back with the girls.'

'You're not trying to set me up or something are you?'

Chibs raises a careful eyebrow, suddenly grave in a way that pulls Juice up short and kills the smile creeping up to his face.

'Lad, I think yeh're a million miles away from bein' ready for tha'.'

He nearly winces. As usual his diversion tactics and attempts at humour are left dead and floating in the water by Chibs' blunt tactlessness.

 

He needn't have worried about the environment causing him to dissociate. The girls aren't two dimensional and don't make a big deal or treat him like a 'fan'. They just take him to the bar, make sure he has everything he wants and put him at his ease. They're so real with him he feels guilty for ever expecting otherwise.

There was a moment when they first got there. In a room off the foyer filming's in progress, and it starts the jitters in him. Chibs hadn't been wrong; coming into physical contact with another human being is enough of a problem for him now. The sight of the girls in there is enough to turn his stomach. Thank fuck it was a girl-on-girl shoot and there were no guys involved or he might've flipped his shit. But Chibs was there immediately, conciliatory and familiar arm around Juice's shoulder, leading him inconspicuously away as if - somehow, impossibly - he gets it.

He's got absolutely zero interest in the shiny porn star personas. Behind the camera it’s a different story. A couple of the studio's minor stars turn out to have their own secret ambitions for filming and production and chat animatedly with Juice about the set-up and camera equipment they use here. It's top of the range stuff; he's impressed.

Girls have always liked him, but there's a different quality to it now. He might be imagining it, but he feels like he's being indulged, kid-gloved. They seem to brighten at someone who's actually more interested in what they have to say about lenses for a low-light shot than all the other stuff. Maybe he gives off some kind of aura announcing him as de-sexed, neurotic and unstable. With a jolt, he realises he's the Chuckie in this scenario. Only crazier.

The whole time he feels his presence at a distance like a great calm. He's pretty sure he's being taken for a harmless half-wit 'cus his eyes keep drifting over people's heads to locate Chibs across the wide entrance room. When he zones out from conversation more than once the girls get on with their business and eventually he's alone at the bar and feeling drained, watching in silence as Chibs conducts the proceedings. He hasn’t told him what they’re doing there, but the way he’s talking to Lyla over the books suggests it’s mostly menial upkeep matters. Surrounded by the meandering of beautiful girls who are just pleasant walk-on parts for Juice in his own interior movie, Chibs is the star. Grouchy, quick-tempered, slightly paunchy, inflexible. Seeing him stood there, inspiring a slightly fearful respect in the prospects he's barking orders at, Juice swells with a pride that is almost painful.

The day has left him with a nostalgia that he muses over in the truck’s passenger seat on the ride back, forehead pressed against the glass, watching it mist up with his breath. Speaks when they pull up.

'No chick's gonna want me now. I don't even wanna fuck. Shit makes me sick.'

His general drugged serenity makes this physical nausea he has sound like some dreary commonplace conversational titbit. His driver grunts a noncommittal agreement, drops out of the truck and throws the door closed.

‘Never even did anything crazy. Wasn’t into that, really. But just saying to someone, ‘you can get it’. You know.’ He gazes into the middle distance, slowly and lovingly finding words for the relative ease he used to feel with his own body, describing the now unfamiliar experience of sexual tension. ‘Checking each other out, letting the tension build…’

Now the thought alone makes him feel like prey.

‘That’s enough, Juice.’

He looks around, shocked. They used to talk crap like this, jibes and crow-eaters and nothing much of anything, when he was normal. He assumed it’d go down well. Chibs fishes out a smoke and lights it even though he’s just ground one out under his boot. He presses the heel of his hand against the vehicle between them. He looks haunted, unnerved. Juice feels awkward suddenly, unsure of what he’s said wrong. Chibs moves around the hood of the truck like a hunter, walks him into the car’s grille, pushes him against the metal, but with one arm behind his shoulders to soften the impact so he knows intuitively that it’s only a show of force.

‘You want some tips or something?’ he as good as snarls. That low husk in his throat with the peppercorn crack in it. Honestly, the aggression feels a little disproportionate.

‘You’re gonna give me a hard time about this? Really?’

He never retaliates when people feel the need to shove up against him, and now he’s pressed back where the edge of the hood pushes jaggedly into his spine, so he smacks the hands away from his collar. Chibs catches his wrist, not done yet.  

‘Here’s my advice... it’s no good 'less it goes both ways. She’s gonna get nothing outta riding yer cock if you’re lying there like a frozen turkey waitin' for stuffin', might as well get herself a big fuckin’ dildo, so do yourself a favour and listen to what _you_ want. What do you want, Juice?'

Oh _shit_. He giggles, high and nervous.

‘Wow.’

‘Are we done wi’ the subject now? Yer not into it. It’s all right that way.’

He feels brittle and undermined somehow.

‘Got it. I’ll save the porn studio talk for group therapy.’

'Aye, very funny.' He looks suddenly awkward, 'Look, I know this sort of stuff's for you and yer shrink, but, is it because...?'

'What? You wanna know if I got hard bent over Tully's little bunkbeds? Is that the deal?' Chibs recoils in shock, and his eyes fill. For once, Juice is the one who's entirely dry eyed. 'The answer is no.'

The dull hum of noise from the street surges like a migraine in the back of his skull. He’s had enough of this bullshit, and he starts to walk up the drive. Chibs falters before wrapping his hand around Juice’s forearm, catching and turning him. The wetness has gathered at the corners of his eyes. He loosens his grip in tacit acknowledgment of boundary issues.

‘You took me there. How did you expect me to react?’

'Give me a little credit though, Juice, I wisnae gonna say that.'

'Yeah,' he relents slowly, 'Alright. Sorry. I’ve had some low points in that place.'

He tells him about the time Bobby had sent him there to get right with himself, and they both smile at the thought of Bobby, entirely unshaken by any existential concerns. Bobby who had belonged to the old days of free love and rock’n’roll and really had required no more than to get blown for all to be right with the world.

‘The worst advice, right?’ Even as early as that incident Juice realised he had been essentially incapable of any kind of desire. It was hilariously ridiculous that he’d done exactly what he was told. Chibs would see right through the story to how unravelled he had been.

‘The worst.’ Chibs crosses himself loosely. ‘God rest his idle soul… Might be a cardinal sin for me to say this as head of the MC, but pussy is not the fuckin holy grail, it was never anyone’s salvation. It’s a commodity we deal in.’

‘Oh, because, I thought you were running a dating agency.’

Chibs slides a pair of dark glasses on, not quite disguising his approval of Juice’s new acid tongue.


End file.
